PMS and poetry: Children's poetry archive****

WARNING: DO NOT WATCH THIS WITH CHILDREN.



Yes, I know this is a kiddie blog. At least it is a blog where kids can click safely on images. So maybe it is not a good idea to have this video here: it contains Violence.

But on the other hand, it is not the kids who are reading this. I hope.

Ok, here is the compromise. Go watch that video -over at Parallel/Alternate before you read further.

This one, on the other hand, you can safely click on now -




I know, there are tons of related cartoons and videos; I have posted more or less the first couple that I found on google, because it is really late, and I have to get started somehow.

And the reason I wanted to grab and hang on to your attention was actually this - I was reading up something about PMS, and came across some theories about the cause of PMS. PMS, or pre-menstrual syndrome, is a name used to refer to a collection of symptoms including and laying stress on, emotional and mental ones, which occur up to two weeks before the menstrual periods and resolve subsequently. As about 80-90% of women in US (and presumably a similar even if lesser proportion worldwide) report some degree of emotional or physical symptoms pre-menstrually, it is actually more in the nature of a norm rather than deviation. About 3-8%, however, experience a more severe form known as PMDD.

The exact cause of PMS is, as yet, unknown. Each female body is subjected to a cyclical ebb and flow of the hormones estrogen and progesterone, but why some should react differently than others is not known, as is the mechanism for many of these changes. We know some correlations, but not enough yet. We will get there, of course, but in the meantime, there are several other theories - and I am talking of theories which are more or less accepted by psychologists and psychiatrists, not the exotic ideas of your neighbourhood eccentric.

"The psychosocial theory hypothesizes that PMDD or PMS is a conscious manifestation of a woman's unconscious conflict about femininity and motherhood. Psychoanalysts proposed that premenstrual physical changes reminded the woman that she was not pregnant and, therefore, was not fulfilling her traditional feminine role. Obviously, proving this theory through scientific evidence is quite difficult.

The cognitive and social learning theory hypothesizes that the onset of menses is an aversive psychological event for women susceptible to PMDD. Moreover, these women might have had negative and extreme thoughts that further reinforce the aversiveness of premenstrual symptoms. They then develop maladaptive coping strategies, such as lability of mood, absence from school or work, and overeating in an attempt to reduce the immediate stress. The immediate reduction of stress acts as a reinforcement, leading to the regular recurrence of symptoms during the premenstrual period.

The sociocultural theory hypothesizes that PMDD is a manifestation of the conflict between the societal expectation of the dual role of women as both productive workers and child-rearing mothers. PMDD is postulated to be a cultural expression of women's discontent with the traditional role of women in the society."

I have quoted from eMedicine, and that is almost like a pure medical text, so first I must clearly state that this is not really meant for laypersons but for medical professionals. Also, all these are valid and useful approaches, both of looking at psychological diagnoses and of treating them. And finally, one line summaries do not do justice to the whole concept which may be wider and more inclusive than this would lead us to believe.

Nevertheless, I found them funny, in a sad kind of way. Here is why -

As far as I can see, all of these link up the symptoms to something that is happening before: an awareness of the impending menstrual period. That is to say that according to psychoanalysts, the woman is aware - at some level if not consciously - that she is not pregnant; the cognitive and social theorists propose that women are troubled by pre-menstrual symptoms, and cope with the wrong strategies, which becomes learned behaviour after repeated reinforcements; and the socio-cultural theory generalizes this even further as discontent with women's role in society at large, but without explaining the cyclicity of it, presumably just because periods remind them of their being female. To really reduce this to basics, all are implying that a woman knows she is going to get periods, and so she becomes moody, for whatever underlying cause (lets not discuss that at this time).

Obviously all women know they are going to have periods - more or less regularly, but does any woman constantly live with awareness inside? An average woman, not the one who is really looking for conception, or looking to avoid it - but an average woman does not count the number of days left till the next one, does not think about it all the time, does not, in fact, have it on her mind. It happens, you live, what is there to think about? Yet these theorists claim that we all are counting down in our secret hearts all the time. Isn't that slightly ridiculous to assume? Further, pregnancy is always a possibility in a sexually active female, and is not discounted till the periods occur - so why should a woman get upset at not being pregnant in the pre-menstrual time? On the contrary, it should be the onset of periods which should induce depression or anxiety or whatever.

Not meaning any disrespect to psychologists, isn't this way too generalized, far too vague, and rather - conveniently trivialized thinking - to explain everything so? Oh, I grant there is likely an element of truth in them, much the same as in vino veritas. But just as you wouldn't ply wine to get a confession in the court of law, you shouldn't just define PMS so. It disturbs me faintly, this so easy clubbing of PMS into such cliched reasons...

And now, to business.

Over at the Papertigers blog today, I was introduced to this poem by Spike Milligan -

On the Ning Nang Nong
Where the Cows go Bong!
and the monkeys all so BOO!
There's a Nong Nang ning
Where the trees go Ping!
And the tea pots jibber jabber joo.
On the Nong Ning Nang
All the mice go Clang
And you just can't catch 'em when they do!
So its Ning Nang Nong
Cows go Bong!
Nong Nang Ning
Trees go ping
Nong Ning Nang
The mouse go Clang
What a noise place to belong
is the Ning Nang Ning Nang Nong!!



How can anyone not be moved by this little poem? Call it nonsense verse if you will, but poetry for children does start off with nursery rhymes and limericks and nonsense rhythms before it becomes real, before -

...From their gross Matter she abstracts the forms,
And draws a kind of Quintessence from things,
Which to her proper nature she transforms
To bear them light on her celestial wings.
This doth She when from things particular
She doth abstract the Universal kinds....

So today's featured site is all about poetry - the Children's Poetry Archive.

This cute looking site is based on the premise that it is better to listen to poetry than to simply read it by yourself. Accordingly it features audio files, usually read by the poets themselves. There is some information about each poet as well. Necessarily only those poems are available for which there is an audio file available, but even that is a good enough introduction to poetry for children. Also necessarily, the older poets are not represented, but on the other hand, the new ones, the ones still living, whom even we might not know of, are.

The site also sells audio cd books of poems if you wish to buy more :

The url - http://www.poetryarchive.org/childrensarchive/home.do

P.S. Incredible stuff you sometimes come across. Viz -



That is an umbrella skirt: a skirt made from an umbrella. Do you really want to wear something so uncomfortable - with spikes and shafts? Looks good, but why not a simple umbrella skirt: you know, the cut? Do follow the link to see the more uncomfortable versions!



Or this, people are paying up for this, in auctions, no less. Limited edition and what not. Piece of wood with a hook - if its done by you and me, it would be dismissed as jugaad, but if it is designer, wow, watch out! And that - seriously - is that a designer baniain, a highbrow version of the humble ganji or what? Isn't this some kind of a joke he is having on us?

(If you look around at his website, you might like the drum disguised as a seat - don't we all know of trunks covered to make diwans, of tins made into stools? Necessity it seems, is not as glamorous as political correctness.)

P.P.S. Indian boyhood by Spike Milligan (he was born in India) -

What happened to the boy I was?
Why did he run away?
And leave me old and thinking, like
There'd been no yesterday?
What happened then?
Was I that boy?
Who laughed and swam in the bund
Is there no going back?
No recompense?
Is there nothing?
No refund?

Beginnings, and Bonte games***

"...the aftermath of confidences is embarrassment."

Beginnings. Have been on my mind lately.

A kaleidoscopic vision, no less. Beginnings in terms of relationships, projects, life, books, work, whatnots. Beginnings as difficult, as easy, as complicated, as natural, as piecemeal, as small, as grand, as fresh, as endings. Beginnings. A word of many flavours, many explorations. For now, it will remain - kaleidoscopic, but one day maybe the colours will shift into a pattern I will know as the one I have been waiting for. I am in no hurry. It is enough to have an idea, to be tantalized by the possibilities, to have, something new in the palm of my mind.

But in the meantime, there is this, that started it all.

Agatha Christie's novel 'The mystery of the blue train'. Its heroine: Katherine Grey, with quiet gray eyes, a sense of humour, and a fortune from the last old lady she had been a companion of. Its hero: A murder in a train. Assorted supporting characters in Riviera, her destination, and in St. Mary Mead, her origin. And the threads which get tangled with hers following the murder - the good-for-nothing devilish and handsome gambler, Derek Kettering; his multimillionaire heiress wife Ruth; her ruthless, Midas like father; the dancer Mirabelle, lending the exotic touch of depravity to Derek's existene; the hard working secretary who falls in love with Katherine.

The story opens - 'It was close on midnight when a man crossed the Place de la Concorde', and you know it is a mystery novel, out and out. The late night clandestine sale of - something small but highly expensive, which goons are after. But it might have started anywhere - any place in the first few chapters could have done for a beginning. It could have started with the dancer Mirelle upbraiding Derek for his pusillanimity in obtaining money or divorce from his wife. It could have started with Ruth Kettering reading love letters from her highly inappropriate paramour, or her father remonstrating with her for doing so. It could have started with Katherine Grey in the lawyer's chambers, learning of the extent of the inheritance she has just come into. Or in the Blue train, Ruth Kettering talking to Katherine Grey - "I am in trouble and don't know what to do." Or even from the sentence Katherine thinks to herself at the end of this conversation - "the aftermath of confidences is embarrassment.' I wonder if I could do it - start from this sentence and rework the opening chapters while keeping the rest of the novel intact, not changing its purpose or nature. It is an interesting, and idle, speculation, but the idea itself is fascinating - that there can be a multitude of openings, given the same book. A fun idea because there are so many possibilities.

Do possibilities excite you too? New beginnings, new ideas?

Talking of new things, here is something new again - something I didn't expect to be showcasing so soon. But, what the heck, it is all the rage with my kiddo, so who am I to quarrel with destiny? Although I must admit, I have tried my best to switch back to the staple diet of our educative and fun games suitable for young 'uns, as opposed to these new and attractive snacks, some of which would classify as junk perhaps. I know I found them, and some of them are quite useful for developing logic and reasoning - yet, I am uneasy at some level, preferring that the sounds from the computer belong to cute and cuddly animals or alphabet and numerals. Read on and see what you think.



Bonte games are the creation of the Belgian games designer Bart Bonte. Some are point and click games (a term I learned after I found these; it means a game in which you look for clues in a given scenario, and find helpful objects needed to complete a task in hand, usually some sort of escape) like Bonte room or Free the bird. Others involve pure logical reasoning - something like the questions in aptitude and IQ tests. The most recent addition is a word game, a kind of variation on scrabble in that you have to make words from falling letters as quick as you can. If you have a pre-teen or a teenager, they are wonderful I think. Heck, it is easy to get addicted to them yourself (but mercifully its a short addiction). But for a kindergarten kid? And yet, would you believe it, for the last month mine has been asking for just these, in particular Loose the Moose, another of those point and click games!



The game is simple, once you get the hang of it. Though I must admit I never had the patience to work it out, and instead relied on the ubiquitous walkthroughs for all such games. (A walkthrough is a step by step solution kindly provided by some smart person for lazy ones like me!) I suppose I could justify it by the need of the hour - show something new quickly to the kid or else this meal opportunity is lost! But truly, I am lazy too! Ok, about the game - collect things from around the room, get the mouse out and get him to do your bidding so as to find the key out of the room. I made the moves the first time, but from then onwards, I am just required in an advisory role. You'd think that once or twice would have been enough, but no, kiddo here wants it all the time. I don't know whether the facination is from the mouse making screeching noises as it jumps, or the Moose head from which the game gets its name, but there you are! Its become so annoying that I have had to ban it outright!



On the other hand, I have tried to encourage Factory balls or Factory balls 2 - both of which are excellent logic games, involving the use of common sense and a bit of logic to decorate balls in a given fashion. I thought it would help in developing rational thinking. Perhaps I am wrong about that - perhaps it is too difficult for my child, hardly four, in that the moves are getting memorized rather than reasoned. But at three and a half, the answer to the conundrum about grass/goat/tiger/man with one boat and a river to cross had come in easily, so I did think that this would not be too hard... I would recommend it wholeheartedly to you though, and older kids. My only regret at the end of these games is that they are so short!



Duck - think outside the flock is the first of the Bonte games I had encountered, and saved it up because it looked so cute and was all about reasoning. To begin with, you are encouraged to click on the ducks to figure out what they may be required to do and it is very simple. Simple enough for pre-schoolers with a hand on the mouse. The higher levels get progressively difficult, and I am invariably called in after a while. But while it lasts, it is fun, and I am hoping that with time, more levels will be within the grasp of that mind.



I am not, purposely, featuring all the games on this site - that is for you to explore if you find it interesting. So Doggnation, which involves planning out sequences in advance, and some quick (but not too fast) mouse flicks, is a wonderful end to this post. It is a game for teens, or pre-teens at the earliest - I had to play it all by myself just to show the built up castle at the end - but wow, it is fun! There are dogs standing, with some building blocks. And there are dogs moving through whose job is to take the blocks according to the order mentioned at each level. Sometimes they can take one, other time, more; there are no limits to retrials, and at the end you have the satisfaction of having successfully sorted out the kind of puzzles you thought left behind with grade school. Unless you are a computer geek of course, in which case it is right down your alley :)

Be sure to remember that not being a kiddie site, there are ads all over, and you have to supervise to prevent the wrong clicks. Also, as Mr. Bonte also shows, blog fashion, the latest games he has found over the web, sometimes you can find yourself in alien lands which had looked promising but are way over the head for your pre-schooler. Bookmark the site, for there are surely going to be new additions from time to time.

The urls -
Bonte games - http://www.bontegames.com/
Factory balls 2 -http://www.bartbonte.com/factoryballs2
Duck - think outside the flock - http://www.bartbonte.com/duck
Doggnation - http://www.doggnation.com/
Loose the Moose - http://home.scarlet.be/~bbonte/loosethemoose.html

P.S. The aftermath of confidences is embarrassment. I wonder. It is true that sometimes the very atmosphere of confidential exchanges makes you share stuff you wouldn't otherwise, and then follows the inevitable self questioning - how much did I reveal? What did I make myself look like? Should I have said this or that about another person? And you might then want to hide, to wish away this person you opened up to. But isn't it also true that you might, after being confidential, discover a friend, a deeper respect than ever before?

Tears and Spirographs

.
From Amy Tan's 'The Joy Luck Club' -

"An-Mei," she whispered, "have you seen the little turtle that lives in the pond?" I nodded. This was a pond in our courtyard and I often poled a stick in the still water to make the turtle swim out from underneath the rocks.

"I also knew that turtle when I was a small child," said my mother. "I used to sit by the pond and watch him swimming to the surface, biting the air with his little beak. He is a very old turtle."

I could see that turtle in my mind and I knew my mother was seeing the same one.

"This turtle feeds on our thoughts," said my mother. "I learned this one day, when I was your age, and Popo said I could no longer be a child. She said I could not shout, or sun, or sit on the ground to catch crickets. I could not cry if I was disappointed. I had to be silent and listen to my elders. And if I did not do this, Popo said she would cut off my hair and send me to a place where Buddhist nuns lived.

"That night, after Popo told me this, I sat by the pond, looking into the water. And because I was weak, I began to cry. Then I saw this turtle swimming to the top and his beak was eating my tears as soon as they touched the water. He ate them quickly, five, six, seven tears, then climbed out of the pond, crawled onto a smooth rock and began to speak.

"The turtle said, 'I have eaten your tears, and this is why I know your misery. But I must warn you. If you cry, your life will always be sad.'

"Then the turtle opened his beak and out poured five, six, seven pearly eggs. The eggs broke open and from them emerged seven birds, who immediately began to chatter and sing. I knew from their snow-white bellies and pretty voices that they were magpies, birds of joy. These birds bent their beaks to the pond and began to drink greedily. And when I reached out my hand to capture one, they all rose up, beat their black wings in my face, and flew up into the air, laughing.

"Now you see,' said the turtle, drifting back into the pond, 'why it is useless to cry. Your tears do not wash away your sorrows. They feed someone else's joy. And that is why you must learn to swallow your own tears.' "

Is that true? Is it true that tears don't wash away our sorrows? What of the days you are so tired, your body speaks in the language of tears without enough reason? And when you have put everything you have in the making of a relationship or a pudding, which still goes sour? Those tears of frustration, and anger, don't they help bring healing? And I remember those grieving tears, for death, for the loss and acceptance of that void. Tears which don't ever fill that empty space but allow you to move on.

But there are tears of hopelessness as well, of impotence in the face of life's vicissitudes, or failure and dejection, of humiliation and rejection. And pain. Pain of third degree burns, of broken bones, of compressed nerves, of cramps which don't stop. Pain of the burnt heart, of broken spirit, of soul squeezed too tight into little jails. What of these? Who do you share these with? And when you do, who amongst the handful of names you have clutched so tightly in your fist will not be a magpie, feasting, feeding, gorging?

But enough of this. Move on now to Spirographs (is that patented, do you know?), those little wheels with holes within wheel with big hole. In the days of yore, when my childhood was long past, but I still roamed free this earth, unencumbered by thoughts of impending extinction akin to the Ankylosauraus, I used to see these with roadside vendors and be tempted to buy them. It seemed like a chidish thing to do, twiddling with colours and circles, so I didn't. Now I think I should have; at least I should like to play again, just fiddle with shapes and colours and the possibilities, and who know what might result? And so, one day, I googled for online spirographs, and here are a few that I saved for you to play too -

Lynn's spirograph is an applet which will allow you to 'use multiple pens and colors at once. If you stop the drawing you can restart it with or without clearing it. You can change the pen colors or select a new disk when the drawing is stopped. Note that when you change disks or click the one (in the disk selection pane) that was being used in the drawing, it will rotate to match the one in the drawing.' Simple and fun, most like what we have seen as children.



The spirograph at Thinks.com has more controls, viz the radii of the two circles and their offset, a complete colour choice, light or dark background, whether a continuous line or not, and what is called revolutions, meaning I suppose the number of revolutions because the line gets thicker when I choose 500... And oh, I almost forgot to tell you that the drawings are more or less instanteous, so the fun is in choosing the numbers :)



David Little's spirograph was the one most liked at our place. It pops out in a new square window, looking more like a game I suppose. But more fun was the finding of new shapes by positioning the smaller circle outside the bigger one. In addition to the control over circle radii and offset, there is also the speed and resolution of rendition, which makes it easy to show the exact path being taken. The page has basic math explanation behind the game, so it is a must read for parents who want to at least know what their kids know...



And over at AFLAX, the java library for Adobe Flash platform, I found this cute little one, attributed to Jim Bumgardner -



The size of the inner disc and its pen hole position is all that you can change, and the thickness of the pen. It keeps moving by itself in rainbow colours, its tail end fading while the leading point moves on...

And finally, there is this spirograph by numbers, which only provides an image after you punch in the required numbers; must for budding mathematicians, but kind of wasted on the young 'uns, and their rushed parents :)

Here are the urls -

Lynn's applet - http://perl.guru.org/lynn/apps/index.html

Spiro online Thinks.com - http://thinks.com/java/spiro/spiro.htm

David Little (maths deptt. Penn State Univ.) - http://www.math.psu.edu/dlittle/java/parametricequations/spirograph/index.html

AFLAX library - http://www.aflax.org/examples/spirograph/spirograph.html

Spirograph by numbers - http://michelle.esfm.ipn.mx/~mrspock/spiro2/

Edit 16th June 2009 - just found another of these flash toys at Chew on glass (http://www.chewonglass.com/games/Wheels) The example below has three wheels, but if you need use only two for the classic spirograph pics. Even if the maths is a bit different, which, being totally sleepy right now, am not even going to figure out :)



Note : Unlike other games, I have not, this time, looked into the backgrounds of each page, so if you wish you may explore further, or not :)

P.S. This post has been nearly a week in the making. For the first few days, unfortunately I alone shall have to take the blame, but for these last three - I am happy to announce a guilty albeit totally unconscious partner: Vivianne Schwarz, author, illustrator and maker of sock monkeys, whose blog has kept me occupied whenever I have had a few moments to spare... Here is a gem I am copying from her 22nd November 2008 post. In entirety. I rather think it may become a chorus line over here, at my blog, where apparently I am doing time lapse bloggography (another little gem I have picked from elsewhere, but more on that some other time. Thanks Pete! And a thousand apologies for calling you Mike earlier.)

La de da doo dum dee da da da... da deee... dum da dooo... da da... don't bother holding the line, try calling back next week... doo doo...

And oh, did I mention we made a sock monkey yesterday?

Questions! And Crickweb****

How much difference a little child's minor illness can make to an entire family's daily life, even if it is just a bit of viral cold! All schedules disrupted, planned activities abandoned, 'me' time gone, blog posts missed... Let us therefore move back to track, with apologies assumed to be stated and accepted, shall we?

When I started this blog, I had expected that as I cataloged and classified my site collection, I would be using them more efficiently and frequently. But I find that the reverse is true. Our computer time has gone down; many meal times are accompanied by movie cds or books, and definitely the sites I showcase are not being utilized to the full. It may be coincidental, or it may be due to the fact that I invariably have other tabs open to 'follow' other blogs, and so wish to avoid heavy flash usage which might crash the laptop. But there has to be some other more satisfactory explanation. What do you think?

In keeping with this theme of underutilization, therefore I am today talking about a site which we have probably never opened a second time after its discovery. Crickweb is a lovely site developed by V2V Training Ltd. of UK, a joint venture of Dan and David Bunker. A tip right in the beginning - if you are using IE 7, you may have some trouble with their pages: check out the FAQ section for advice. Also the ads on the left are pretty prominent, and can't be left alone with children even though they seem to be content appropriate :)

Crickweb was designed to be an educational aid for teachers and parents in UK, and has interactive activities for foundation stage, key stages 1 and 2 according to the British system, covering "Maths, English, Science, History, Geography, R.E., D.T., I.C.T, French and Spanish." The one area I have explored is early years (screenshot above), which is for primary school kids. The index page gives a brief description as well as instructions to play. Clicking on the thumbnail or name causes the game to open in a new tab/window.

The game window size is satisfactorily large, but the height could be reduced just a wee bit to avoid having to scroll up and down on a smaller screen (mine is 17 inch - I think! Too late at night to go measuring it up now!). The games are well conceived, so even if the cartoon quality is not quite Antzy, or even Tom and Jerryish, they are still capable of holding your child's attention. Some games, such as counting the number of balloons (shown here), are fairly simple, while others, like the number game below this one, which is about matching the number names to numerals, are for slightly older children.





Some games are self correcting. For instance, a correct answer is highlighted in green above. Others are open ended, such as the simple weighing game below -

There are, of course, other games, and even some of the older group activities can be used for young ones with due modifications. But that is for you to personalize. As a teaching resource, it is a truly excellent site.

There are also some games which are not educational in content - click on the games section in the top menu for more fun games like this parachuting baby below :) As it involves simple mouse movement, it is excellent for toddlers just beginning to handle the mouse. The tiny little cough when clouds get in the way is too cute for kids to want to avoid though!



Normally I skip mentioning the links pages, because dedicated site surfers would find it themselves anyway, and for the others, it is simply too much information. But you must take a look at the link section here, for there are games with thumbnails, same as the rest of the site, so it is so easy to decide on which link to click. Some of these linked sites we have already covered (BBC, Uptoten, Spot) while others will be covered in due course of time. In the meantime, explore and have fun!

The url - http://www.crickweb.co.uk/

P.S. I have been wondering about who said that it was easy to love the world - it was your neighbour that was the problem? Why should it be so? Why are our souls moved by adversity at a distance, but when it is the neighbour, the colleague, the relative, the employee, there are sundry other considerations which prevent us from being as compassionate as we may be? Why do we judge those near us; judge and are judged, for why else would we blog away about our deepest feelings, yet shirk from using our real names lest those we know read it?

I know no answers yet, nor have I given sufficient thought to tease and analyze this, so I leave you with two links to the reason why I asked them instead - Nino's mum at The Nino Effect talking of the the sisterhood of the traveling word, and Mercedes at Desert Candy talking about her mom's recently diagnosed brain cancer. I wish I could talk about these posts, but I can't. You will just have to read them yourself.

P.P.S. Thanks to Desert Candy, I now know how to put up an index of all sites covered - in another blog of course! Someday soon, I will do it!

Winter tidbits and Argosy medical animation****

Winter is warmer this year. The loads of heavy winter clothing I had amassed in anticipation are going to need a new home next year, little used. Yet, it is still winter. The sun has gone south for these months, as always. Mornings are dewy cool still when the last of school buses have left, the office goers dispersed to destination. Sweaters and thick dresses and warm inners hang heavy on clotheslines, slowly drying in the brief pale afternoons. The smell of smoke is in the air, smoke and roasting peanuts and sweet potatoes. Evenings begin to leak the sound of laughing children much sooner than before, emptying even as street lamps begin to come on. Sitting in the little patch of sun I can find, I still crave for sarson ka saag with makke di roti, dripping in butter, for cracking peanuts and shelling hara channa, for gazhak and revri...

If you have been to the Visible body project, you may have explored and reached the parent site of the company which has developed it - Argosy medical animation. If you haven't, or if you have problems in running the visible body software because of its large size, or because you have a Mac, try it today. Of course it is not a kiddie site; it is a professional site meant particularly to showcase the range and scope of their animations to prospective clients. But that doesn't mean we can't use it!



Don't be put off by the complex appearance of the home page. It looks very technical, and agreed, the site is so, but there is stuff which is useful for children, even preschoolers! The index page has a menu on the left sidebar, from which I advise you to click on the animation by system.



Then choose your system, and hover on the little snapshot of the animation to read a description below. Once you find what you like, click through to see it. Simple! Featured here is the beating heart, showing the cut section complete with muscles, valves and the nerve impulses (see that flash of light there?), and the sound of heart beats to accompany. A very brief animation: it had my two year old asking for more. But ever since the concept of heart 'beating' has been established firmly :)



The one below outlines the process of hearing, with a commentary to explain:



Quite a few of these animations were prepared for patient education, so are useful and simple to understand. Some are truly technical, of no use to anyone but the medical specialty involved. Which is not to say that your teenager may not need to use it for a school project :) I am therefore refraining from pointing you to those I think are best, because my judgement at this time is naturally aligned with a young child. As with most of life's questions, answers have to be tailored according to the age and comprehending power of the listener, so your choices will be different. The videos/animations are varying in length, but for the most part, brief, almost too brief. (If only childbirth was as quick as is shown here!) But the accuracy and level of detail is spectacular, as one would expect from a company of this repute. Do try it! Its a wonderful resource.

The url - http://www.argosymedical.com/index.html

P.S. Trying to dredge a suitable winter poem to finish the post, and failing to find any at this ungodly hour, I turn to the internet. Isn't this cute -

January

January sparkles.
January's bold.
January huffs and puffs.
January's cold.

So, instead of an elegant poem, let me leave you with these elegant fruit bowls, as in bowls made from fruit by artist Margaret Dorfman. I am truly fida on them! If only I could learn how to make them myself...

Click on the photo to reach Susan Lumoto's Daily Art Muse, or go to the Gallery of functional arts here or here for more.

A gift, and Arvind Gupta's toys

I got a gift today.

It is a book called 'A house is a house for me' by Mary Ann Hoberman, illustrated by Betty Fraser, and it comes to me from Scribbler of Vintage books my kid loves, whose giveaway I had the incredible fortune to win. I still can't believe I did, but that is another matter! Anyway, the book is absolutely brand new: no scratches, no bent corners, even the new print smell intact. Amazing. Going by the name, I had been looking forward to getting a - well, vintage book as in something that had seen life, knocked around a bit, had a drink or two. But this is like its just come off the press. If one could leer at a book, I would be asking, "Where have you been all my life, dear?" to which of course it'd reply that for the first eight years or so, it wasn't even born... Thanks for the book Scribbler. [Are you sure that you haven't been and bought a new book, just for us? Not that I am returning it or anything, even if!]

Even better is the gift that is in the book. The gift of the book I should say. The gift of a new perspective, a new way of looking at things. It starts, very simply, with an enchanting verse that I can't resist reading in a sing-song voice -

"A hill is a house for an ant, an ant.
A hive is a house for a bee.
A hole is a house for a mole or a mouse
And a house is a house for me!"

And goes on in this vein, very gradually building up the concept of one being - or thing - 'housing' in another, to lead to this -

"A mirror is a house for reflections...
A throat is a house for a hum..."

Isn't that a bewitching, intriguing, tingling idea? As the book itself says,

"And once you get started in thinking this way,
It seems that whatever you see
Is either a house or it lives in a house,"

How beautiful to be able to think of the eye as a house for the world you see, the child as a house for laughter and joy, the trees for the raindrops that fall after the shower... But the end is the beautifullest of all, as Anna of the book might have said. Beautiful in its simplicity and grand compass.

"And the earth is a house for us all."

And on the subject of eco-conservation, I am going to feature today a site that is definitely not for online use, but it deserves a full post to itself. You'll soon see why when you visit Arvind Gupta's Books and Toys. An engineer by profession, Mr. Gupta is currently working at Children's Science Centre of Inter-university centre of Astronomy and Astrophysics (IUCAA) at Pune, India. I don't know whether the correct big word to use would be doyen or a pioneer or something else altogether when talking about his popularizing science or promoting indigenous toy making, but I know of no other person who does these, and does them so well. He makes toys from waste material, scraps we would not look at twice before throwing away, and in so doing, redefines the meaning of toys for our generation. What are toys after all? Anything that can be enjoyed, played with is a toy. Every mother has at some time or the other lamented the use of her kitchen utensils as toys by tiny tots who ignore perfectly beautiful and expensive 'toys'. Kids don't have the same fixed notions of what a toy means - they are groomed into it. But not only does Mr. Gupta use the silliest of material, available even to the poorest of children, he also uses them to illustrate some point of science, and makes them doubly useful for teaching. And then, instead of charging a small fortune for great heirlooms of hard bound books with '1001 ideas' in them, he goes and distributes it all for free. Whichever way he can. Which is why you will find his 'toys', complete with illustrations, on his website for you to use, directly, or as you need to modify it. Just go through the site. Even if the stuff is too plebeian for you, you will still get ideas. And a new way of looking at things.

Also on his site are loads of pdf books - science books, education books, Russian classics, children't books - waiting to be downloaded and read. And documentaries. What else does one need to teach?

Or learn?

And now, the site itself. When you reach the homepage, there are three links - Books, toys and films. Nothing else. Click on each to expand or lead to a fresh page, and you have a veritable library on your hands. There are no flash galleries, no colourful boxes in sidebars and fancy banners, but there is a lot of stuff!

The url - http://www.arvindguptatoys.com/

Go on, challenge yourself to look at things in a new light twice over today!

P.S. Again, as the site is not meant for online usage, no star rating has been given.

Relax. Check out tygh****

Leisure, by W.H. Davies -

What is this life, if full of care,
We have no time to stand and stare?

No time to stand beneath the boughs
And stare as long as sheep or cows.

No time to see, when woods we pass,
Where squirrels hide their nuts in grass.

No time to see, in broad daylight,
Streams full of stars, like stars at night.

No time to turn at Beauty's glance,
And watch her feet, how they can dance.

No time to wait till her mouth can
Finish the smile her eyes began.

A poor life this, if full of care,
We have no time to stand and stare.

Geoff Dellow of U.K. has a site named - for some reason not mentioned on the site itself, tygh. Actually, coming to think of it, this is the url; the site doesn't appear to have a name! I wonder if the pronunciation is like tiger or dig or something else altogether? Oh well, some things in life remain mysteries. Which should not prevent you from going to this site and checking the fun math it offers! Geoff is a flash enthusiast, which means that basically his site is a way of showcasing how much fun flash can be, and how it can be used as an educational tool. For a flash based site, it doesn't take any time to load whatsoever. While it is loading - you can skip this though - you read the poem I have also quoted here :)



Try the various links to explore. They are easy, and fun to watch and use for teaching. Like the tangrams. I have amalgamated three screenshots below to make a composite, but the original is actually one figure morphing into another position, another figure playing football in a fast animation sequence. A little - too little animation, but nice intro to tangrams and what you can do with those magic seven pieces...



Check out the halves section for ideas on how many ways can you halve an object - in this case, a square. Perfect to use when you have introduced the subject of fractions, and the child has understood it well.



The tiles game is great maths - and for silly people like me who left their maths in school, it is still great! Kids enjoy this, because the premise of the game is click and see what happens, and that is what childhood is about.



The animated sequence of various geometrical figures tumbling down a straight line, drawing curves, is truly more than a thousand words, conveying the entire idea so simply. Ask a child what might happen if you marked a point on a square and tumbled it down the table - what would the point do in space - and it will be a difficult thing to grasp. But show him or her this, and you have planted ideas that will germinate and branch and grow roots.



That leaves us with just a couple of other links on the page - don't be lazy! Go check those out :)

The url - http://www.tygh.co.uk/

P.S. I don't think I remember seeing this song - might have done, but who in India hasn't heard it? As a child, all it meant to me was the melody, and the first two lines extolling the loss of the rainy season worth millions, to a job paying two cents. Being a nature lover, I could totally empathize with someone not wanting to be in a stuffy office when it was raining outside... It was only a few years back when it suddenly hit me that the lady is talking more of passion and romance than of the season! Talk of naivety! Oh well. The seductive undertones not withstanding, it was still the song that came to mind when I read the poem above, so here it is -



P.P.S. 19th Oct. 08 edit -
I have received word from Geoff Dellow about the story behind tygh. I quote from his mail -

"Why tygh -

because it doesn't mean anything and therefore can be used for anything - I use it all the time for email so not meaning anything is handy.

secondly it's dead easy to type

third it was one of the few interesting four letter combinations available at the time

As for my site you've discovered one small part of it !

http://www.tygh.co.uk/students is by far the more important to me and believe it or not , to the mathematics experts like Prof Celia Hoyle of the London Institute of education.

Using Flash as kids have done develops mathematical thinking because it explores the use of logic in everything you do - what's more it's fun, which is important. "

(Rage) and Quiet - Orisinal***

Orisinal: morning sunshine. The land of pastel colours, of restful beauty, of gentle tinkling music, and - fast moving eyes and fingers! The personal playground of Ferry Halim, as the artist himself puts it, is an oasis of pretty little games which will appeal to your aesthetics as well as provide you with some finger fun. You? Yes, you, for unfortunately, the colour scheme, no matter how pleasing to adult eyes, just doesn't hold interest for the very young. The games have cute themes and characters, but by and large are too fast for little fingers, so that doesn't help either. The game premise is usually very simple, as in the teatime game below where the mice have to be moved out of harm's way by simply clicking above or below them, but the pace is relatively fast for tiny tots, and they get discouraged after a while.



The main page is a flash animated page but it doesn't take long to load at all. Hovering over a little thumbnail will light it up with brighter colours, and its name will appear below.



There are games which are easy to play of course, and even toddlers may enjoy watching them as you play and provide commentary, but you have to play all forty six of them first to be able to figure out which these are! Whether that is a bonus or extra work is your take! Starry night, for example, requires simple mouse movement to bounce the yellow star in such a way as to light up the other stars.



The site does have ads, but they are unobtrusive, at the bottom of the page, so the experience is not spoiled. The music, as I said, is wonderfully peaceful.

Here is a snapshot from the bungee bear game. Catch a rabbit from behind by jumping (using the left click) and you get points. Bang into it from front, and no good results. Trouble is, mouse movement, even a little bit, will often reverse your direction, so if you thought this was a simple game, just try it!



Below the games, in the miscellaneous section, you will find buttons for the store, flowers, rain, guest book, link back, wallpapers and trailer. Of these, flowers is a sort of ecard - there are a few pale (really pale!) pink flowers to be picked from the garden, resized and rotated and stuck in a crystal orb, so you can send them to - me :) Or anyone, of course. But the best is the rain button. Click to get a visual of a garden, or presumably a garden for only a tiny corner of the screen is really visible clearly - and rain falling unending. The music is not quite just rain sounds, but it comes close. Try it for a tranquil Zen experience!

And now for the disclaimer! Not all the games are as little-girl-in-sunshine as I have suggested. There are a couple of bam-bam games as well - but thats your choice. Even those are cute though!

The url - http://www.ferryhalim.com/orisinal/

P.S. This is actually the second half of the original post, focusing on the 'quiet'. The first half, on 'rage' will follow. Soon.

Children's book trust and the Rosetta project****

Continuing our discussion of small publishers in Indian children's literature, I doubt if the Children's Book Trust can be called 'small'. Established in 1957, the trust publishes up to or more than 100 titles annually - but this data from their website is apparently from 1997, judging by their referring to CBT being 50 years old. In any case, it has been around for a very long time, though its visibility, even in the country is rather low. I wonder why that is the case, considering that the books are really pocket friendly - the picture books for example, may be priced as low as Rs. 15 - 25, and there is a significant, if not large, choice available. I haven't found these books at most of the big bookstores. Nor have I seen them in the nukkad stationery shops, where at least they could have jostled for attention with similar priced alphabet and number and picture and activity books from other publishers. There isn't even a possibility of buying their books online, so the nostalgic NRI must needs buy them in person on the next visit home...



The print quality is usually good, the storylines marginal to good - the art better. Once again, there is a wide difference between the truly creative books (of which there are more than a few) and the ones which appear to be written just by throwing a few sentences together. But for all that, they constitute a marvelous introduction to reading for the Indian child, because all of them are India centric. The characters, even the animals, are Indian, as is the milieu. The books are in English, and Hindi, but none bilingual. This I think is a major drawback, for at one stroke it alienates the entire non-hindi speaking populace, and does not allow for the possibility of a child learning to read English through these books.

The other problem I see is that there is very little of contemporary reference. I totally agree with the need for children to be exposed to the rural or semi-urban India, as well as the forests and tribes and ancient tales - all these are stories worth the telling. But we also need new stories, set in the new India, with new concerns and realities. Because when my child grows up, and looks to Enid Blyton for playroom adventures, and sees the tales of Munshi Premchand as distant as Raja Bhoj, I shall have nothing to offer as an alternative. No matter how rigorously I may discuss these picture books now, they are just as much of an 'imaginary' world as those of Finland or Ethiopia. Almost just as exotic. And so when the time comes to allow our children their choice in buying, where will the CBT be? I am supporting it wholeheartedly, but will my child - till a parent?

Children's books online: The Rosetta project is another book related website that I have fallen for. Quite the antithesis of the CBT site - it has freely downloadable (for personal use only) children's books of old which are out of the copyright domain.



Being a volunteer driven project, they are always in need of donations and volunteers - to give books, scan them, translate, and do other chores. You can see that I am setting up for another call to volunteer :) But worth it, don't you think? Especially if you have some old books up in the attic that will be out in the yard sale next. Or if you love the feel of old books, love looking at the illustrations from those times, or even, miss some book handed down from your parents or grandparents. For these books are scanned and posted. Simple, but effective. The text is easily readable as long as the book was well preserved, and they do take care to use only the unspoilt ones.

The books are surprisingly quick to display. Navigation is not thrifty - just arrows for next page, but it works. A few books have translations available, but you have to click for it on each page, and it pops up in a separate small window right in the middle of the page. There is no voice over or other animation. But can you resist looking at the old favourites? Featured here - The tale of Peter Rabbit by Beatrix Potter,



The little engine that could, by Wally Piper,



and Kidnapped by R.L.Stevenson.



They also have a few multimedia downloads available for sale, along with tee shirts and such in their store.

The url - http://www.childrensbooksonline.org/

P.S. Have you come across the Paper tigers? Reading one of their old blog entries about the Bologna book fair, in which they mention small publishers around the world, I was struck by this fragment - "for without quality it is hard to foster a love of reading and provide the key to the mirror/window." That is at least partly what ails the Indian scene at present: lack of consistent high quality of books. Not just the quality of the printed material, which is quite adequate, but of vision, and of storytelling. In the blog, they have mentioned Tara books, of which I was unaware till Priya commented about them. Now this is a publishing house which seems to have put in all their effort in selling to the global community. The books are priced in about the same range as those of CBT - but in dollars. Which makes it a simple choice for households struggling to manage their budgets - don't buy the book! On the other hand, I wonder what the quality is like? I haven't read any - surprisingly haven't even noticed any in the bookfairs either - so I would welcome information about their books, especially in comparison with the NGOs or CBT/NBT.

Edit 3rd Oct.2008 - I have received word from Guy Chocensky - the webmaster of the Rosetta project, that they are particularly short of funds, and books, at this time. As the traffic on my site is rather too sluggish (euphemism for nobody-reads-this-boo-hoo), I have no great hopes for an immediate response, but am still letting you all know :) Man lives on hope!

And oh, he also says that they have over 600 books :)

Write addict on Children's museum of Indianapolis***

So, is this official addiction, this wanting to write something even when I am not supposed to, especially because I am not supposed to? It is, in its own way, intoxicating, this life of the mind: this reaching within for words, for ideas; this celebrating the power of thought; this glorying in the incredibly awesomeness of thinking. Humble wonder and dizzying sense of mastery unitedly gaze at this prerogative, this privilege of the creation of thought.

So, to counteract, I found this in an article by Mark Ravenhill at the Guardian yesterday - "A personally defined landscape can easily become an enclosed and introverted prison, referring only to itself." One line to remember, to take from another mind. One line, perhaps out of context, surely meaning something else when it was written down, but one line to put my meaning to, here, and flag.

The Children's museum of Indianapolis is apparently the world's largest children's museum, spread over 19 acres of land, receiving more than a million visitors each year. The figures I, however, would be more interested in are the number of visitors to their website! They list fourteen awards, including one from American Library Association. I am not entirely sure that it is all that great a design, but judge for yourself. If you are a teacher, or parent to a home schooling kid, museums in general are a great resource, so this would be handy on that score. They apparently do have study units and other resources for teachers, and conduct workshops at the museum for home schooling kids, for which you can register. I, on the other hand, have so far been solely concerned with the total experience of a site, which includes content as well as layout and ease of usage, so I was not overly thrilled by the very functional look. Once you overcome that first prejudice, the kids section of the menu will lead you to games according to age - preK to grade 2, grades 3-5 and grades 6-8.



The games open in new windows, which may or may not be full sized. Some of them are allied to the exhibits at the museum - in fact the window will also have information about show timings and other such tidbits. Others are plain games. A few are common i.e. they have three levels corresponding to the three age groups previously defined, while others are unique for that group.

Among the games for the younger children, I was enticed by the label of trains of past, present and future. However, the name was deceptive, and the game involved placing passengers and cargo in the correct train compartment and such. It has three levels involving visuals versus increasing use of reading, but adult help may still be required, if only to maintain some interest. An interesting game for children nevertheless.

Build your robot is exactly what the name says, and is enjoyable and funky. You can print out the robot image when you are finished.

Dinosphere is one of the games allied to their exhibits, and has three levels, not all of which may be incompatible with your young child's understanding. Explore and see. The dinosaur related ABCs were disappointing for some very mundane and stretching a point entries. Other activities were more fun. The older children get a better deal with thought provoking discussions about whether fossils are or ought to be private property etc.



Fireworks of glass allows you to place some virtual glass bobbles on a wire framework - a simple and fun task well within a preschooler's range, even at the third level. There are also level based informational modules to do with glass sculpting, which were too dry for my kid though.

Haunted house is the section most enjoyable in October, because the games are simple colouring, puzzles and catching treats by using the keyboard.



Jolly days winter wonderland has suggestions for kids to play offline during winter - nothing great. The puppet game has great potential, and I thought it would be fun to talk about puppets of the world, but it invariably messes up on my browser. The first level starts off with giving different puppets personalities - good for helping children identify emotions and their expressions. The next section logically ought to have something to do with using or mobilizing these puppets, but it doesn't. Instead you have to match some puppet photos with the kind of puppets they are - invariably this is where we get a blank so I don't know more :) And there is no back button, so if you have to go back and choose another level, you can't.



I am not going to cover the other two age ranges - you can get a good enough idea by the above. Do check out the mummy related animation in the grade 3-5 section though, even for a younger child -



All in all, a very variegated selection of games - understandable as it is not a game site per se. Useful for integration in teaching however. The url - http://www.childrensmuseum.org/

P.S. If you haven't yet read the article quoted above, do. It is an interesting thing, more so because it gives the sense of being slightly incomplete, of being - dare I say it - more of a blog entry than an essay. And the comments are even more interesting, showing the myriad ways his words have been interpreted. Each has seen something just slightly different from the other, enough to cause arguments and discussions if all these people were in the same place, same time.

Booksey! And ICDL*****

A currently continuing poll over at care2.com asks if you prefer to read fiction or non fiction books. So far, of the 2701 votes, 50% have gone to a bit of both, 26% to non fiction and 21% to fiction. Three percent have replied that they don't read at all. Two thousand is a very very small sample compared to the world's literate population. Even so, the tiny little percentage that says - honestly I think - that they don't read is interesting. Presumably these are people who have books available, or at least, can have books if they so wish - whether by begging, borrowing, buying or - no, not stealing :) So, not to read a book is then a conscious decision? What sort of world view does one need to have in order to find reading books superfluous? Or is it one of default, of the lack of motivation to overcome that inertia, or an honest lack of time from more pressing commitments like getting the daily bread? Who knows? But, looking around me, here, now, I see that this percentage has to be much much larger. Love of reading is a habit inculcated in childhood, and even then it needs to be nurtured. We all have our own obsessions - books happen to be mine, but that is my idiosyncrasy. Yours will be different. Even if you read voraciously as a child, once caught up in the daily grind of work-work-work, what would you take out time for? The garden, your music, your family, your growth, your religion, your stamps, your car, your - the list is endless. Where do books feature on your list?

International Children's Digital Library is an effort of the US based non profit organization ICDL foundation. Their mission, in their own words - "is to support the world's children in becoming effective members of the global community - who exhibit tolerance and respect for diverse cultures, languages and ideas -- by making the best in children's literature available online free of charge. The Foundation pursues its vision by building a digital library of outstanding children's books from around the world and supporting communities of children and adults in exploring and using this literature through innovative technology designed in close partnership with children for children."



Currently they have more than 2600 books online available for free! We are not talking of simple text availability here like the Project Gutenberg (God bless Michael Hart), but of full colour pages of great quality from scanned books. These books include not just English but various other languages - you might get lucky and find one in yours as well. Some are bilingual and others are being translated into differenet languages already. If you go to 'read books', and click on 'find books', you will find that you can search books by language, by age group, the characters or type (fairy tales, imaginary creatures etc.), the nature (illustrated or not), whether award winning or recent, and by the length of the book. You could also search by country with a spinning globe. Or by author, title or keyword. In addition, there are also historical collections of books for children from 18th and 19th centuries. It really is like having a library at your finger tips!


The books open in an easy to operate reader, which can be made full page and the icons minimized if you so wish. [Some books, however, do require a different kind of reader or are flash based - you generally have a choice when you open these, and if you don't, its always easy to install the required program.] Pages can be turned by clicking on them, or using the arrow keys, and there is a pretty effective zoom available for reading text.



Here is an example of the zoomed text. Navigation is using your browser bars. In case zooming on each and every page is irritating - and it can become so - try projecting from your computer onto a wall or screen (if you have the equipment!). Some books have the option of pop up text or translucent text i.e. text which increases in size out of proportion to the page size, thus ensuring legibility without changing the background view. No matter what the drawbacks, no book lover can resist the lure....


The url - http://www.childrenslibrary.org/

P.S. If you are a book lover, and are fluent in two or more languages, do consider volunteering for them :)

P.S. One of the comments posted in the poll says, "I am sorry for those who don't read. What do they have for an escape?" This I found even more interesting. Are books, even serious non fiction books which apparently more people read (again an observation not supported by sale of books figures, and by looking all around me), an escape mechanism? That and that alone? I know that fiction does function as an escape mechanism for me sometimes. Change your reality for a while and when you return, you might have left your bad mood elsewhere. But a history book? Biographies? Travelogues? Current affairs? Essays on theosophy? Is it possible for even these to be an escape mechanism? Is the world of words an alternate world, no matter how accurate it be? I am positive that the answer is no, but I feel capriciously quizzical at the moment, disinclined to analyze and answer. I am content to lift up stones and stir up the insect world, to shake the raindrops off leaves, to jump from stone to stone, singing, for I am thinking about books....

P.P.S. So I have begun, finally, the series about books that I had been thinking of ever since Priya Kuriyan's comment. I don't know if I will continue serially or skip hop and jump but watch out - there are more to come!